Thank you for putting that so clearly. There is a common misconception about copyright that just because you work hard on something that it is eligible for copyright. That is simply not the case in the US. A work must have some modicum of originality in order to be eligible. In the instance of remixing music or performing classical music, the originality is in the interpretation. In the case of maps, the originality is in the representation. In the case of Google's plan here... I don't see any originality at all.
Google might want to read Sec. 506 before they claim copyright on this stuff.
(c) Fraudulent Copyright Notice. - Any person who, with fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or words of the same purport that such person knows to be false, or who, with fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for public distribution any article bearing such notice or words that such person knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500.
I don't know if that is $2,500 per notice, or per person. If it's per notice, that could end up being a steep fine.
Actually, it's not even that easy to prevent a patent. Our lawyer told us we couldn't prevent the government from issuing a competitor's patent, even though it was something we invented and had proof of prior art. The problem was that our prior art was not patented (we thought it was too obvious), so it was below the examiner's radar. Our lawyer said the best we could do was to write a letter to their lawyer stating that we invented the device in question. Unfortunately that didn't end up helping. The patent was granted, and the competitor threatened to sue us and our customers for using their IP. We worked around it by redesigning, but still, it was a pain in the ass.
Right now, any type of public comment period would help. wiki, snail mail, town crier, messenger pigeon, anything!
i was thinking the same thing this morning watching GMA. the dad was all "i have no idea how this guy knew my daughter." wha? how is this possible? i mean, the guy claims he loved her, not just knew her. surely there's some connection there that we just haven't heard. the fact that the guy was into kiddie porn just further raises my suspicions. something's just not adding up. the darkest suspicion would be that the dad was somehow involved with the kiddie porn ring with the killer... then again, evidence about that would surely have been discovered and leaked sometime in these 10 years.
common hypercorrection. no. it is wet. in fact, the phrase predates "whet your appetite" by centuries. to whet means to sharpen (as in to make keen, like a blade or a sense, not sharp like a musical note). you cannot whet your whistle, unless you mean to take the metallic instrument to a grindstone to turn it into some insane woodwind weapon.:-)
urg. I think it was some cheesy title like "Best Ever Organ Classics." I'll try to dig it up. Otherwise, come halloween, you can hear a live performance of it at almost any AGO Halloween concert. email me if you're actually interested, and I'll look and see if there's one in your area. Several colleges have them.
In the absence of proof, we'll have to assume no causality between USA PATRIOT Act, etc. and the seeming increase in the unwarranted arrest of photographers and the destruction of their property. But I would be interested to see what the pre- and post-9/11 numbers of "unwarraned arrests of photographers" look like. Do they even keep such a stat?
Maybe it is just the *reporting* of these false arrests that are making more news. If that's the case, then it's a good thing. Maybe it's just because there are more people with cameraphones, security systems, and cameras.
But I'm not convinced. Things like arresting somebody for taking a picture of a power plant, etc.,etc. were almost unheard of 5 years ago.
Of course, we still have to contend with things like Air Marshals putting random photographers on "suspicious persons" lists and the like. That sort of behavior is not at the local level, and it can be attributed to post-9/11 mindset/laws. This is where I think the connection lies. Local law enforcers see their federal counterparts engaging this activity, and they think they can do it, too. It may be a tenuous connection, but it certainly warrants further evaluation.
So long as the press keeps doing its job and reports incidents like this, I don't see us approaching any type of police state. But we photographers must stand up for our rights!
Didn't mean to insult your friend. I fully understand and appreciate having well-to-do in-laws-to-be. It's a nice blessing. But at my school there were some filthy rich kids whose parents funneled away cash so they wouldn't have to report it to the feds. Sorry for assuming the worst, I've just been dealing with a lot of lawyers recently, so I'm rather bitter. It's not really like me at all.:-)
Actually most student loans, including federal loans, accrue interest while the student is in college; some even require payments while the student is still in college. I specifically applied for interest-free (aka subsidized) loans when I applied for financial aid, but was only granted interest-bearing loans (that, oddly enough, I didn't apply for). The subsidized loans are designed to go to people in need, who must then spend that money on school and school related costs, not people who can turn around and put the cash in an interest-bearing account. Your friends are likely guilty of fraud and are one of the reasons deserving people have a hell of a hard time getting decent financial aid.
As for whether it is stupid to take out a loan and invest, the answer is: of course not! This is what people do all the time. Buying stock on margin, getting a home improvement loan to invest in your home value, or simply buying something with a 0% interest credit card and leaving your money in a CD or something... these are all good ideas. But only if a) the return of the investment is higher than the interest rate of the loan, and b) you can afford to lose money in the investment and still cover your debt in a reasonable fashion.
As a corollary, if you're paying extra money on your 2.9% car loan when you're sitting around with a 7.99% credit card debt piling up, that's a bad idea. Don't laugh; I've seen people do this.
The stores in my area have "express" self-service registers for people with just a few items. The other option is some places will let you check out from the Customer Service booth up front if you only have one or two items.
I've found that the express lines are just as slow as the regular self-service lines. I regularly go through the "normal" self service lane with a dozen or more items, and I'm normally done about the same time as the guys with four or five items. That's even if I have fruit/veggies in the cart. The biggest problem I've found is the scanners are not kept clean, so they do not reliably read the UPC. But I've noticed there is normally an aux scanner perpendicular to the one built into the table, so I use that one for most items instead.
The other problem, of course, is the scales on the bagging table as GP said. Even if you have one item, it still makes you put it on the scale. And good luck if it's something like marshmallows! That almost never registers. WTF is the point of the scales? I mean, the only thing it's good for is to keep people from putting it back in their cart and inadvertantly scanning the item again. It does nothing to prevent any kind of fraud.
I have a friend who wanted to add some color to her MySpace page, but absolutely HATED the available online tools to do so, since they are riddled with advertisements and popups. So after converting her to Firefox, I chatted with her about her goals for her page. she's using it to stay in touch with (read "keep tabs on") kids from her work. So it just had to be flashy enough to keep her kids from thinking she's lame.
As soon as I showed her how to view HTML source and what parts of the CSS were for which part of her page, she was off and running. She now has a pretty good grasp on CSS rules, classes, and properties. I figure even the most cynical of us would appreciate that.
Also, there's a MySpace group of 21 Slashdot members. So sad that the intersection of the groups is that small. I know there are more who are on both, but just aren't part of the group. *slinks away in shame*
Technically, you can have low-frequency ultrasound pulses. My wife is a physical therapist, and they use ultrasound daily. The ultrasound machine has two modes, continuous and pulsed. Continuous mode is good for tissue heating and relaxation, and pulsed mode is good for stimulating tissue growth (according to some).
In the first case, low-frequency could mean at the low end of the ultrasound range. You can change the frequency of the ultrasonic vibrations in order to change the depth of heating as well as the overall energy transferred. High frequencies are used for shallow heating (3MHz goes about 1cm), and frequencies around two octaves lower (750 kHz) are for "deep heat" (5cm).
You can also change the frequence of the pulses when in pulsed mode. This might also be what they were referring to. Bear in mind that different models have different capabilities, so check with your health care professional before using any of these devices. IANAPT.
But shouldn't it matter if the sex is consensual? My 16-year-old cousin has been dating a 21-year-old since they were 15 and 20 (and they are both on MySpace, interestingly enough). I don't know for a fact, but I'm pretty sure they're sexually active, too, seeing as most of her sisters got knocked up about that age. But what happens if she and her parents realize that he's a total dickhead and decide to press charges? According to the laws of the state they live in, that's a real possibility, and the guy could be sent up the river for a looooong time. And I seriously doubt this guy was smart/clever enough to get written permission from my religious-nutso uncle to bang his daughter. Granted that this is a different type of case than the one in the news now, but it offers a different way to look at these laws preventing consensual sex just because of age.
What would be really cool is if it could find a song at the same tempo as you are running, and keep the song in beat with your footsteps. Or you could have it programmed to help you step up the pace by subtly increasing the tempo as you get going. You might not even notice that you were going faster. Using music as a speed training tool, now there's one for the patent office!
Well, if that is legal, I recommend you to change your laws...
didn't you get the memo? All it takes for something to be legal is for the President and his staff to keep repeating to the media that it is legal. over and over. and over. And if that doesn't work, say you're doing it to catch terrorists, stop drug use, or protect the children. Eventually everybody will stop caring about it. So actually, changing the laws won't matter a bit.
I love how Rep. Martiny (R) says "that's for the courts to decide." He's probably one of the same guys complaining about "activist judges." What a prick. Maybe the LA state congress doesn't have to swear an oath to uphold the state and federal constitutions, but if they do, this guy must not have been paying attention. Generally upholding the Constitution doesn't mean specifically writing laws that he suspects are unconstitutional but decides "that ain't my job; let them thar judges figger it out." This is infuriating. I'm sure there're similar laws in the works for all the other states, too.
I've had the idea every now and again that advertisements should fall under the category of non-copyrightable things (like blank forms and facts). The only exception might be if an advertising company shows a sample ad to a client. They shouldn't be able to rip off the idea and run with their own ad campaign. But it would be very had to codify that in law. So maybe it has to be copyrightable, but not enforced. Why in the world wouldn't Coke want everybody to see that last commercial with the polar bears and penguins? What good can it possibly serve? I guess somebody could try to rip off the ad for another product, but most people would still be thinking, "hmm... i could really use a Coke right about now." Maybe they could protect certain aspects of it with trademarking laws, but that would be even harder to do, I think.
Does Congress really have the authority to require DRM? I don't think so. Find me a clause in the Constitution that gives them that right. It does not fall under the right to make copyright. It might fall under the interstate commerce clause, but only if they specifically say DRM is required for any CD going from one state to another. I think this DRM thing would fall under the category of things left up to the States, as outlined in Amendment X.
Slashdot Mirror
Google might want to read Sec. 506 before they claim copyright on this stuff.
I don't know if that is $2,500 per notice, or per person. If it's per notice, that could end up being a steep fine.That's ALMOST as bad as when people use "i.e." instead of "e.g.", e.g. "Ie: 'I would of been rich by now if i hadn't...'" (explanation).
Actually, it's not even that easy to prevent a patent. Our lawyer told us we couldn't prevent the government from issuing a competitor's patent, even though it was something we invented and had proof of prior art. The problem was that our prior art was not patented (we thought it was too obvious), so it was below the examiner's radar. Our lawyer said the best we could do was to write a letter to their lawyer stating that we invented the device in question. Unfortunately that didn't end up helping. The patent was granted, and the competitor threatened to sue us and our customers for using their IP. We worked around it by redesigning, but still, it was a pain in the ass. Right now, any type of public comment period would help. wiki, snail mail, town crier, messenger pigeon, anything!
wasn't he a jr high teacher, though? she was 6. what's that? first grade? god i can't believe i'm even talking about this. i'm so disgusted.
i was thinking the same thing this morning watching GMA. the dad was all "i have no idea how this guy knew my daughter." wha? how is this possible? i mean, the guy claims he loved her, not just knew her. surely there's some connection there that we just haven't heard. the fact that the guy was into kiddie porn just further raises my suspicions. something's just not adding up. the darkest suspicion would be that the dad was somehow involved with the kiddie porn ring with the killer... then again, evidence about that would surely have been discovered and leaked sometime in these 10 years.
only applies to photographs of fewer than five homes, from what i understand.
exactly what I was thinking. and that Broccoli guy gets the disease named after him. that was a very original star trekky episode.
common hypercorrection. no. it is wet. in fact, the phrase predates "whet your appetite" by centuries. to whet means to sharpen (as in to make keen, like a blade or a sense, not sharp like a musical note). you cannot whet your whistle, unless you mean to take the metallic instrument to a grindstone to turn it into some insane woodwind weapon. :-)
urg. I think it was some cheesy title like "Best Ever Organ Classics." I'll try to dig it up. Otherwise, come halloween, you can hear a live performance of it at almost any AGO Halloween concert. email me if you're actually interested, and I'll look and see if there's one in your area. Several colleges have them.
Maybe it is just the *reporting* of these false arrests that are making more news. If that's the case, then it's a good thing. Maybe it's just because there are more people with cameraphones, security systems, and cameras.
But I'm not convinced. Things like arresting somebody for taking a picture of a power plant, etc., etc. were almost unheard of 5 years ago. Of course, we still have to contend with things like Air Marshals putting random photographers on "suspicious persons" lists and the like. That sort of behavior is not at the local level, and it can be attributed to post-9/11 mindset/laws. This is where I think the connection lies. Local law enforcers see their federal counterparts engaging this activity, and they think they can do it, too. It may be a tenuous connection, but it certainly warrants further evaluation.
So long as the press keeps doing its job and reports incidents like this, I don't see us approaching any type of police state. But we photographers must stand up for our rights!
There's a badass four-hands four-feet organ duet version of that... :-)
Didn't mean to insult your friend. I fully understand and appreciate having well-to-do in-laws-to-be. It's a nice blessing. But at my school there were some filthy rich kids whose parents funneled away cash so they wouldn't have to report it to the feds. Sorry for assuming the worst, I've just been dealing with a lot of lawyers recently, so I'm rather bitter. It's not really like me at all. :-)
Actually most student loans, including federal loans, accrue interest while the student is in college; some even require payments while the student is still in college. I specifically applied for interest-free (aka subsidized) loans when I applied for financial aid, but was only granted interest-bearing loans (that, oddly enough, I didn't apply for). The subsidized loans are designed to go to people in need, who must then spend that money on school and school related costs, not people who can turn around and put the cash in an interest-bearing account. Your friends are likely guilty of fraud and are one of the reasons deserving people have a hell of a hard time getting decent financial aid.
As for whether it is stupid to take out a loan and invest, the answer is: of course not! This is what people do all the time. Buying stock on margin, getting a home improvement loan to invest in your home value, or simply buying something with a 0% interest credit card and leaving your money in a CD or something... these are all good ideas. But only if a) the return of the investment is higher than the interest rate of the loan, and b) you can afford to lose money in the investment and still cover your debt in a reasonable fashion.
As a corollary, if you're paying extra money on your 2.9% car loan when you're sitting around with a 7.99% credit card debt piling up, that's a bad idea. Don't laugh; I've seen people do this.
The stores in my area have "express" self-service registers for people with just a few items. The other option is some places will let you check out from the Customer Service booth up front if you only have one or two items.
I've found that the express lines are just as slow as the regular self-service lines. I regularly go through the "normal" self service lane with a dozen or more items, and I'm normally done about the same time as the guys with four or five items. That's even if I have fruit/veggies in the cart. The biggest problem I've found is the scanners are not kept clean, so they do not reliably read the UPC. But I've noticed there is normally an aux scanner perpendicular to the one built into the table, so I use that one for most items instead.
The other problem, of course, is the scales on the bagging table as GP said. Even if you have one item, it still makes you put it on the scale. And good luck if it's something like marshmallows! That almost never registers. WTF is the point of the scales? I mean, the only thing it's good for is to keep people from putting it back in their cart and inadvertantly scanning the item again. It does nothing to prevent any kind of fraud.
As soon as I showed her how to view HTML source and what parts of the CSS were for which part of her page, she was off and running. She now has a pretty good grasp on CSS rules, classes, and properties. I figure even the most cynical of us would appreciate that.
Also, there's a MySpace group of 21 Slashdot members. So sad that the intersection of the groups is that small. I know there are more who are on both, but just aren't part of the group. *slinks away in shame*
http://maps.yuan.cc/ I use this for my flickr photos.
Technically, you can have low-frequency ultrasound pulses. My wife is a physical therapist, and they use ultrasound daily. The ultrasound machine has two modes, continuous and pulsed. Continuous mode is good for tissue heating and relaxation, and pulsed mode is good for stimulating tissue growth (according to some).
In the first case, low-frequency could mean at the low end of the ultrasound range. You can change the frequency of the ultrasonic vibrations in order to change the depth of heating as well as the overall energy transferred. High frequencies are used for shallow heating (3MHz goes about 1cm), and frequencies around two octaves lower (750 kHz) are for "deep heat" (5cm).
You can also change the frequence of the pulses when in pulsed mode. This might also be what they were referring to. Bear in mind that different models have different capabilities, so check with your health care professional before using any of these devices. IANAPT.
But shouldn't it matter if the sex is consensual? My 16-year-old cousin has been dating a 21-year-old since they were 15 and 20 (and they are both on MySpace, interestingly enough). I don't know for a fact, but I'm pretty sure they're sexually active, too, seeing as most of her sisters got knocked up about that age. But what happens if she and her parents realize that he's a total dickhead and decide to press charges? According to the laws of the state they live in, that's a real possibility, and the guy could be sent up the river for a looooong time. And I seriously doubt this guy was smart/clever enough to get written permission from my religious-nutso uncle to bang his daughter. Granted that this is a different type of case than the one in the news now, but it offers a different way to look at these laws preventing consensual sex just because of age.
What would be really cool is if it could find a song at the same tempo as you are running, and keep the song in beat with your footsteps. Or you could have it programmed to help you step up the pace by subtly increasing the tempo as you get going. You might not even notice that you were going faster. Using music as a speed training tool, now there's one for the patent office!
i don't know, but there sure are a lot of manual users.
I love how Rep. Martiny (R) says "that's for the courts to decide." He's probably one of the same guys complaining about "activist judges." What a prick. Maybe the LA state congress doesn't have to swear an oath to uphold the state and federal constitutions, but if they do, this guy must not have been paying attention. Generally upholding the Constitution doesn't mean specifically writing laws that he suspects are unconstitutional but decides "that ain't my job; let them thar judges figger it out." This is infuriating. I'm sure there're similar laws in the works for all the other states, too.
I've had the idea every now and again that advertisements should fall under the category of non-copyrightable things (like blank forms and facts). The only exception might be if an advertising company shows a sample ad to a client. They shouldn't be able to rip off the idea and run with their own ad campaign. But it would be very had to codify that in law. So maybe it has to be copyrightable, but not enforced. Why in the world wouldn't Coke want everybody to see that last commercial with the polar bears and penguins? What good can it possibly serve? I guess somebody could try to rip off the ad for another product, but most people would still be thinking, "hmm... i could really use a Coke right about now." Maybe they could protect certain aspects of it with trademarking laws, but that would be even harder to do, I think.
When will we be able to drink with our finger?
Does Congress really have the authority to require DRM? I don't think so. Find me a clause in the Constitution that gives them that right. It does not fall under the right to make copyright. It might fall under the interstate commerce clause, but only if they specifically say DRM is required for any CD going from one state to another. I think this DRM thing would fall under the category of things left up to the States, as outlined in Amendment X.